IceFilms Forum

Anything goes here... you silly, silly people. That is, anything goes unless its On Topic.... if that makes sense.... i dunno... i confuse me... Serious topics that have nothing to do with icefilms go here too.

Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken from a record distance of 3.7 billion miles, at the edge of our solar system. It was shot and transmitted by the Voyager 1 spacecraft almost 13 years after its launch.

Dr. Carl Sagan, who originally requested that the picture be taken, famously reflected on its meaning:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Last edited by Projectgilda on Mon Sep 12, 2011 5:04 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Reason:A bit more info

"And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall be put to death, and all the congregation shall stone him".Leviticus 24: 16

This pic was proven to be a fake. It was taken one night in the Tonight Show studio during the Johnny Carson era. It's a close up of Johnny's famous curtain, taken by a security guard while most of the lights were out.

Kenny_Tha_Killa wrote:This pic was proven to be a fake. It was taken one night in the Tonight Show studio during the Johnny Carson era. It's a close up of Johnny's famous curtain, taken by a security guard while most of the lights were out.

Wet blanket much kenny?

I have so many wise quips for this situation ...

-Remember, it's not the subject, but the message that matters.-Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.-We don't have to believe in god, all that matters is that we behave like we do.-Understanding is irrelevant, we are what we do.

etc etc etc ...

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. - Steven Wright.